Nation sees steep fall in death sentences

Steep decline in death sentences

PEGGY O'HARE, Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle

Published 6:30 am, Thursday, December 17, 2009

Death sentences have declined across the nation, including in Texas — the state known for sending the most people to death row — in the last decade, according to a report released today by the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

The report did not examine specific counties, but Harris County is mirroring the national trend. Harris County juries have imposed fewer death sentences in the last five fiscal years, beginning around the time a law was enacted allowing them to consider life sentences without parole, according to the Texas Judicial System's annual reports.

Juries across the country may be using death sentences more sparingly because of stricter scrutiny of criminal cases and because of a growing distrust of that method of punishment, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

“I think it's the mistakes” made in the legal system, Dieter said. “I think it's the awareness jurors have that they might learn something five or 10 years later that would change their opinion, and they just don't know. There are just so many cases where allegedly guilty people have been freed.”

“People are just somewhat hesitant about using the death penalty. Prosecutors know that, and so they're seeking it less,” Dieter added.

Also likely contributing to the drop is the fact that every state using the death penalty now has the option of considering life sentences without parole, he said.

During the 1990s, Texas averaged 34 death sentences per year, the national report says. But beginning in the 1999-2000 fiscal year, the number of death sentences handed down each year in Texas dropped into the 20s, and starting in the 2004-2005 fiscal year, dropped into the teens, according to Texas Judicial System data.

The Death Penalty Information Report says nine death sentences have been imposed in Texas so far in the 2009 calendar year, while the Texas Judicial System's most recent annual report says 15 death sentences were handed down statewide during the 2008-2009 fiscal year ending Aug. 31.

2 sentences in retrials

Death sentences in Harris County have also dropped to unprecedented lows, beginning around the time Gov. Rick Perry signed a law allowing juries to consider the life-without-parole option.

Harris County district attorney's officials said two people were sentenced to death here during the calendar year 2009, both on retrials — Robert Fratta, for hiring two men to fatally shoot his wife in 1994, and Raymond DeLeon Martinez, for robbing and killing a Houston tavern owner in 1983.

No one in Harris County was sentenced to death during the 2008 calendar year, while five people were sentenced to death here in calendar year 2007, district attorney's officials said.

The Texas Judicial System annual reports — which tracks death sentences by fiscal years instead — showed two people were sentenced to death in Harris County for each of the last three fiscal years. In each of the two fiscal years before that, three people were sentenced to death in Harris County — a sharp decline from years previously, when the county frequently recorded double-digit numbers of death sentences annually.

Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos, who has been in office for only a year, said it's too early to say whether her prosecutors are seeking the death penalty less frequently, as Dieter suggests is happening nationwide. But she anticipates her office will be trying more capital murder cases next year than it did in 2009.

She said the final decision of whether to seek a death sentence rests with her.

“This is something that's a very solemn duty,” Lykos said, “and it shouldn't be undertaken lightly. I think unfortunately, in other states, some have been rather cavalier. But the decision should not be made on cost — the decision should rise and fall on the case itself and how heinous the offense is.”

Down 7 years in a row

Death sentences nationwide reached a high of 328 in 1994 but dropped 63 percent in the past decade, according to the Death Penalty Information Center's report. The number of death sentences nationwide for calendar year 2009 is projected to be 106, the seventh consecutive year of decline, the report states.

Dieter called it the lowest number of death sentences in the country in 30 years but cautioned there is no guarantee the trend will continue.

“But it's not a one-year trend — it's like a decade-long trend,” he said. “So I think what that says is the U.S. is following a parallel track (of countries) around the world. Much of the world also is stopping the death penalty. So it's appropriate that it's slowing down in the U.S. as well.”

The number of states using the death penalty also is dropping slowly but surely. New Mexico abolished the death penalty earlier this year, becoming the 15th state to do so.

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